No Wake

Saturday:
It isn’t a windy day just overcast and there is snow on the ground. Riding the bike in this. My cold ears but satisfied core. I sat inside today. It was too wet to sit at a picnic table and too cold. The boat was tied up. There was no wake.

We had been talking here (on the blog) before about picking where we left off in a book and our capacity for re entering the story…

A Thousand Plateaus surprised me today. I’ve gotten so used to having time to read it only on Saturday mornings that I forgot that I’d had time to read it early one morning (a Wednesday) in Kitchener at the bakery/coffee shop near my brother’s house.

When I opened the book today, I saw yellow post-its I’d stuck in there and stars and underlining and for a moment I couldn’t remember having made those marks. I hadn’t marked up the book very much before.

At the bakery/coffee shop near my brother’s house, they have an unusual system of service – reading a café becomes another way of reading: how to behave, knowing the rules, what language to use, where is the cream?, where are the lids?, who or how you pay?. At the City Bakery there are a lot of signs and a path to follow. Walk in the door, turn right for coffee (self-serve), fridge straight ahead for milk and cream (self-serve), don’t know about the sugar because I don’t use it, another turn (to the left this time) for baked goods (so far no interaction with people) that are well labelled with names and prices and then an old-fashioned bus fare box in which you deposit payment – preferably exact change but the sign said “we make change”. There was a staff but they were baking in full view behind the baked goods, in white smocks and hats (perhaps another sign so that there would be no confusion about their role as bakers).

All this reading before I sat down to read. When I read, I read about the history of ideas, the perpetual life of ideas. I had trouble understanding one thing – I put a question mark beside it. It was about D&G’s distinction between natural history and evolution. …something about internal vs. external conditions and relationships vs. production. I’ll keep workin’ on it!

After about half an hour of relatively uninterrupted reading – other people around me mostly reading newspapers and quietly talking, even a woman and two small children eating preschool bagels -- a couple of loud talking women sat down two tables away from me. I found it hard to concentrate…but it was time to go anyway.

Is one half hour adequate time to read?

There was a couple talking in the other coffee shop on Saturday too. It was almost like they were on their first date. Or maybe they’d known each other a long time ago and had lost track. There were mini bios and loud, almost forced laughter…I read for about 45 minutes there mostly able to concentrate.

Can you re enter the “zone” of the book and depart it so quickly? People often tell me they stay up “all night” reading a good book. I never do that. These days I often fall asleep reading DQ. I dream about him. I remember reading the bulk of J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey in a boat while my friends were fishing but that was some time ago…

Is there ever adequate reading time?